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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26114119">Apocrypha</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenrir4life/pseuds/Fenrir4life'>Fenrir4life</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Story_Maker/pseuds/The_Story_Maker'>The_Story_Maker</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Epiphany</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:34:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,635</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26114119</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenrir4life/pseuds/Fenrir4life, https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Story_Maker/pseuds/The_Story_Maker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Apocrypha is a companion work to our other FF7 story, Epiphany, containing related material that doesn’t fit neatly into the main story. This will include side stories, humorous outtakes, deleted scenes, and whatever other miscellaneous bits of writing we feel like sharing. Some of the entries will be able to stand on their own, while others most definitely will not. How each piece relates to Epiphany-verse canon will also vary. Some entries we do consider as having happened in Epiphany’s continuity, but were far enough removed from the main story that it didn’t really make sense to include them in Epiphany itself. Others entries will definitely be non-canon.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Apocrypha</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>For those reading this work at a later date: This story was written at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, while my father was in the hospital (not from coronavirus ... from cancer). The writing of it served as catharsis, channeling my volatile mixture of emotions into something productive.</p><p>We consider this piece part of Epiphany-verse canon.</p><p>In Epiphany’s continuity, Summon Materia are explained as being coalesced from the stories of a thing. They may not be how the thing actually was, but are instead how the legend got passed down over time. For instance, Ifrit is explained as being originally just some ancient Cetra warlord who really liked using fire magic. However, as time progressed, the legends of him grew and were embellished until he became this almost demonic creature of the flames. The same explanation applies to other summons: Leviathan was born from tales of real ocean megafauna, Ramuh was a real sage who specialized in lightning magic, etc.</p><p>This story focuses on a lone Cetra who specialized in ice magic, as she lays dying and her life flashes before her eyes.</p><p>Her name is Shiva.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I am Shiva. I am fighting for my daughter.</p><p>I cling to this tenaciously as the virus ravages my body. Even as I feel Jenova’s tendrils creep into my mind, stubbornly, bull-headedly, I keep my will aligned to just one purpose.</p><p>I am Shiva. I am fighting for my daughter.</p><p>I haven’t seen the sun in years. When the meteor came, it gouged a huge chunk out of the roof of the world. Our scientists say all that rock was pulverized into dust, thrown into the atmosphere. This apocalyptic world is one of perpetual, cloud-covered twilight, interspersed with the deepest of nights, without moon or stars.</p><p>The plants grow sickly and die. Our food grows short as our crop yields fail. Yet the real calamity was not the meteor itself, but what came after. The abomination. The horror.</p><p>Jenova.</p><p>How could we, in our darkest of nightmares, have envisioned such a thing? A sentient virus that rewrites you to become more of itself. Your mind, subsumed. Your body, fuel for its flesh constructs.</p><p>I remember the first reports – heh, how long until there are none now-living who can say such a thing? Some sort of sickness, spreading in the north.</p><p>Many discounted it at the time. Of <em>course </em>there would be disease, given these conditions. Few even used the word “plague,” although I remember a chill in my soul as I considered it. I wonder now how many of those poo-pooing the idea were already infected, their minds subtly altered to pave the way for the virus’ coming. Yet for many, to my sadness, I suspect the explanation was much more myopically simple. We had our own problems, as our societies struggled under the never-ending pall of clouds. And those lands <em>were </em>so very far away.</p><p>Then, seemingly abruptly, Jenova was <em>here</em>.</p><p>I remember the panic, “It’s in the water!”, “Don’t trust the dead!”, the clash of information, the untold hundreds that must have died fruitlessly, acting under the belief of some rumor, because <em>we didn’t know </em>...</p><p>That terrifying time of uncertainty was the worst series of weeks I had experienced in my life. Yet all would pale compared to The War that came after.</p><p>I’m cold. A not uncommon occurrence for an ice mage, but this cold is different.</p><p><em>You have to </em><em><b>go</b></em><em>, </em>every instinct screams at me. My brain relentlessly marches every symptom of hypothermia before my mind’s eye. I am dying. I <em>can’t</em> die; I have too many people to live for.</p><p>No; that’s the virus talking. I <em>must</em> stay. We all made our peace with death before coming here. Shiva’s last gambit.</p><p>I am Shiva. I am <em>Shiva.</em> I am fighting for my daughter.</p><p>We begged for as much help as possible – and we got so many. But I know there were still those who did not answer the call.</p><p>I remember the Human Movement. Run away. Hide. Isolate yourself and your loved ones. Some decry them as cowards, cursing their name for abandoning us, but I can only deliver a helpless laugh. At any other time, with any other plague, <em>they </em>would be the ones in the right.</p><p>But not this one.</p><p>I remember the flesh-cities of Ur-Tranesh. Abandoned buildings, with empty windows dark and staring like the sockets of some monstrous, many-eyed skull, casually left behind because entire populations had been converted into raw material for even more horrific constructs. I remember the tendrils as tall as buildings, waving in the distance. I remember the undulating hordes of Meat-Forged Degradations rapidly coalesced to deal with us.</p><p>I remember creatures so nightmarish, some of Jenova’s most tempting whispers are the promise She could make me forget. Fluid is how the virus spreads, so every monstrosity was shaped to exploit this vector. I remember things shaped like Cetra, but with teeth too sharp and mouths too wide, spittle dripping from their jaws as they sought to bite and hold on, attempting to infect you with their saliva. I remember giant things with rending claws, their arms covered in weeping sores to drip into any wound they made. I remember the Defiler, a sanity-shattering creature that seemed made entirely of viscous ichor, that flowed across the battlefield and crashed down on a person to engulf them completely and force its way down their throat.</p><p>The first song about me was written for killing that thing. I froze it solid even as it was mid-way through murdering another victim. It’s horrific, what freezing blood inside the body does to the flesh of someone still alive, but it was a kinder fate than what was in store for the poor man.</p><p>I knew him.</p><p>What was his name? It had been important to me, once. I am having trouble remembering, keeping focus. What is individuality to Jenova? There is only Jenova.</p><p>That was always the most frightening thing about facing Her. You could be facing a thousand Revenant Mortifications, packs of Mutated Severance, or flailing masses of the Rancorous Seethe, yet while each might seem like a distinct entity, everything you saw was part of one, giant individual. A million blasphemous bodies – and only one mind.</p><p>Was it any wonder our society fell? Every person infected, even those with strong enough will to fight off her influence, was a potential spy, reporting all they experienced. The only wonder is that we survived at all.</p><p>Yet from this darkness of the end of our civilization, I reflect, new heroes emerged. What legends would live on, of the Knights of the Round and the Court of Alexander? Of the last bastion from whence we regrouped and continued to launch assaults against Jenova?</p><p>I hope they sing of us, I think as tears prick my eyes and freeze on my cheeks. It would have been so easy to focus on survival. To allow all other considerations to die for the sake of this overriding goal. Yet at the court, what it was to be Cetra was reaffirmed, our heart and soul saved. For the Knights of the Round determined if we were to fall to corruption, it would not be by our own hands. We would live and die as the Goddess’ last defenders; we would meet our end worthy to carry the name of those chosen by the planet.</p><p>We were not perfect, for that too is an impossible goal ... But, Goddess, were our doomed efforts the stuff of legend.</p><p>I hope someone remembers them for me. I feel the memories slipping away; I’m left with only feelings.</p><p>I feel content. I feel frightened. I feel despairing rage. So much lost, so <em>much</em> lost. I can’t ... I can’t ...</p><p>... across every corner of the world ... towering ... majesty ... so much ... gone.</p><p>A gaping hole where the rest of Me should be. I flail, even as I feel myself slipping away. So much. So much <em>mind</em> and so much material; the infrastructure to support it could be spread across so wide an area ... All gone. I remember being <em>so</em> much ... but now I can’t remember how I did it ... can’t remember the way I thought ...</p><p><span> NO! I am J - I am </span><em>Shiva!</em> SHIVA!</p><p>I am a prodigy of Ice Magic. I am a survivor of countless battles. I am the sum of everything. I am The Singular, the Multiple, and the Entire. I am the .... thing ... I am ... I am ...</p><p>My daughter. I cling to her memory, ruthlessly sacrificing all else so I can remember that. She is a being outside of myself, while Jenova recognizes nothing outside of Herself as important. I have to hold onto my daughter’s face; she is <em>why</em> I fight. She is why I die.</p><p>I vaguely remember the final meeting. Deep in the halls of Alexander, where I pitched the plan that would end one thing forever: Jenova, or the world.</p><p>I remember there was skepticism – and rightly so. To lose would mean not just defeat, but damnation. Our fallen would rise again as biomass for Jenova. Our knowledge would be added to her growing Mind. There’s even some who say that the souls of those completely corrupted cannot return to the Lifestream.</p><p>Yet in a war of attrition, we could not win. Every person infected was not only a loss for us, but a gain for Jenova. This is why we still fought major battles, despite the risk, because we could temporarily overwhelm her ability to respond and slash back her resources.</p><p>But this gambit would take <em>everything. </em>Not just the Knights of the Round, but every Cetra capable of fighting. To maybe – <em>maybe</em> – end this all for good.</p><p>To do this, we could hold nothing back, leave no reserves. We could not run the risk that even one contingent might have been the difference between victory and defeat; the calamity defeat entailed was too great. If we failed, Jenova would gain so much that she’d be unstoppable. It would be the doom not just of the Cetra, but of the entire world.</p><p>Yet, the planet is dying anyway. Her lifeblood seeps through the wound in the top of the world, while the living things across her surface are being corrupted and stolen from her by this alien thing. Doom is inevitable, I argued.</p><p>A slow decay, or a glorious last stand? Which would define us: fear of failure, or hope of success?</p><p>I remember how my heart burst with pride as I beheld the numbers assembled. More Cetra than I knew still existed. So many had answered the call of hope.</p><p>I remember the goodbyes. Even in victory, we knew, it was likely the vast majority of us would not get to see what peace looked like. There were also those who, even in our most desperate of hours, could not be called to fight. The youngest, the oldest, those who had been crippled but not infected. I remember the feel of all those goodbyes, even if their faces melt and slip from my memory. I remember the tears and night of celebration. A wake for an entire people.</p><p>There were, of course, concerns about Jenova learning of our plan through an infected individual. To make matters even more complicated, we couldn’t simply screen for infection; we <em>knew</em> there were infected among us. Marching at our forefront would be those doomed souls whose wills were still fighting against Jenova for dominance. We <em>had</em> to include them all.</p><p>If all went well, they would be marching to a heroic death.</p><p>Still, the risk of one turning on us at the worst possible moment was real. We kept them isolated and controlled their information carefully, knowing that even someone on our side could betray us. Yet, many worried it was all for naught. These were the people we knew about; if someone had been infected and we hadn’t realized it ...</p><p>I kept everyone’s spirits up the best I could, telling them not to worry. I’m sure they thought I was just being optimistic for the sake of morale.</p><p>Clever, clever, clever; the meat was oh so very clever.</p><p>Just getting everybody to the North Crater was a heroic endeavor. The logistics ... I don’t remember the logistics.</p><p>I do remember the Crater itself. The greatest of the Flesh Cities. Horrifying/Beautiful. Grotesque/Pure. Biomass from billions of souls, flowed together, to form a center-of-mass from which bits could be broken off, but would always return, thanks to the Reunion instinct. I am one and I desire to be one. Whole.</p><p>No, not one ... more-than-one. I am Jenovvvv – I am S-S-S ...</p><p>There is more than one thing. Not just me. My daughter. I am S-Sh-Shiva.</p><p>The battle ... I don’t remember the battle ... I should remember the battle ... It feels like a thing that should be remembered ...</p><p>But I do remember the final gambit. Yes.</p><p>In the center of it all, we unleashed our greatest spell. With the Lifestream washing around us, we called on the Planet itself for aid and invoked ... Holy. A shell formed around us, enclosing the Crater and trapping the rest of Jenova’s mass outside. As the entirety of Jenova’s biomass rushed to fling itself on the shield, we invoked a fire great enough to put the ancient legends of Ifrit to shame.</p><p>Ride, Ifrit. Ride one last time, you warlord of old. Even one as masterful with the flames as you would delight in the conflagration we raised. A pyre for an entire race.</p><p>Oh, how Jenova shrieked. Even as she flung everything she had left against the shield, she could feel the heart being torn out of her massive being. Giant sections of her mind going dark as all those synapses were reduced to ash. She could feel shock setting in. In that moment, her assault grew all the more desperate, for there was suddenly the concern that she might already have lost the capacity to recover from it. That the pieces of her mind capable of handling the trauma were already ash.</p><p>That was when I launched my actual final plan. Because Holy wasn’t a shield. It was a trap.</p><p>Already pulled inward by the Reunion instinct and her own frantic shrieks, Holy seized at Jenova’s approaching extremities and dragged them into the inferno. The last of our infected vanguard died in exultation, purified down to the last converted cell. Faster and faster Jenova was drawn in, her mind convulsing in agony as she continued to die, cell after cell aftercellaftercellaftercellafter–</p><p>Fire is the most painful way to end. It ignites every pain synapse a body possesses. And with a body so large ...</p><p>The shock was so great, a mind might never recover again.</p><p>So few pieces left now. A few remnants beyond the reach of the spell. Yet even now, I can feel those starting to go dark as the Cetra, experienced by now in identifying infection, root them out and destroy them. In the end, just this one body remains, preserved at the epicenter of the magics. Nearly fully converted now, but so very <em>tiny</em> compared to what had existed before. So much lost ... not again ... my mind, reeling ... fading ... worse than before ... not just fading ... dying.</p><p>I remember being infected a dozen times over in the final push, as I clung stubbornly to maintaining the spell. I knew willpower could hold Jenova at bay and, in the end, I didn’t need to stave her off for long. Now, I’m all that remains, preserved to be the focal point for a magic now ended.</p><p>One last thing before I go. The planet is still aching, crying out as it bleeds from its open wound. With the last of my strength, I call upon the ice that always responded so easily to me. Everything I am, I pour into this last, final spell. The glacier will act as a scab across the planet’s injury – and will cover the ash that is our bones.</p><p>I am done. My task is complete. The world ... is saved.</p><p>I hope my daughter is happy with it. I will miss not being able to explore it with her. I am sure, despite all our efforts, it will be a harsh place for a young Cetra. Do I wish I could have come home to her? ... Yes. But all things must end. It is the nature of things for a parent to die before their child. What more could a parent wish for than to ensure their child is able to survive the world they leave behind?</p><p>One day, my daughter will live to see the sun.</p><p>I am not cold any longer. I am warm. This is good; I like the warm. I can relax now. I might even sleep.</p><p>Yes ...</p><p>Sleep ...</p><p>I am Jenova. I am ... I am ...</p><p>I do not remember my name. But I do remember what I am.</p><p>Mother.</p>
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